Nobody Sees
by Sam Ichijoji
Summary: Two women who thought they knew how the worlds worked are whisked away against their will and find that the universe is even more strange and inexplicable than they once thought... but there is a friction between them that cannot be ignored - can the 10th Doctor atone for his sins or will his quest prove fruitless? (See if you can spot the allusions to The Hitchhikers Guide novels)
1. 1: Undisclosed

**1 – _Undisclosed_**

Her love was dying and there was nothing she could do; his doctor had killed him.

So now she was crying, looking at her love and saying sorry over, and over and over. No matter how much his eyes pleaded with her that he understood, and to let him go into the light that was taking him, she would not let go. She was not ready to let him go, and neither was his sister who clung on to him just as hard as she herself was on the other side of the hospital bed. The light grew brighter in its feast of her love and she could see now that it was nibbling away at his sister too. She felt a tingling sensation and realised that the light was nibbling at her too, but she was not ready to give up yet, she had given up on her love too often to let go now. She had often thought over her eighty-odd years that she would be willing to die for her love, but when she saw the light grow brighter still and take larger chunks away from the sister, she knew she could not let another die, and suddenly all those times she had let her love go before made it so much easier for her to do it one last time. This time there was a purpose. This time she would save a life.

And as her love was finally consumed and the light melted away from the sister and her, she slumped to the floor and slept, knowing nothing in that instant of her past, present or future that made any sense at all.


	2. 2: Apartment

**2 - _Apartment_**

It was a night – for there were many that could be pinpointed as the night that changed so much yet so little – that changed everything and yet, nothing at all.

For one of the busiest cities in the world, there was a surprising lack of witnesses to the four people who came out of the dead end alley at three o'clock in the morning, largely owing to the fact that it was three o'clock in the morning.

But, if there had been a witness, someone whose sole purpose for the entire night had been to watch the entrance to that alley, they would be astounded to observe what seemed to be a young western man with a long, flowing, brown coat casually strolling about with two young girls. The older of the two looked just younger than twenty and, strangely for someone with her eastern roots, had shoulder length hair somewhere between orange and auburn that was completely natural – although a witness would undoubtedly think it was dyed. The older girl was arguing with the younger girl, who had shortish brown hair which was much more ethnically suitable. The younger was slowing the other two down due to the cumbersome bundle in her arms, and it was this that the two girls were arguing about.

If the witness had heard what the two girls were saying, which he did not because he is purely hypothetical because there were, as previously stated, no witnesses to this specific moment in time aside from the four exiting the alley themselves, he would have heard the following exchange.

The older girl saying, "It would be much quicker, and easier if I took him,"

The younger girl replying, tersely, "He's not your brother,"

"Well, he's not yours either,"

"He was though, and you weren't there for him when he was, so why should you be now?"

"You know that's not true, I wouldn't be here now if it were,"

The younger was silent, thinking about the strain of the baby's weight in her arms and the climb ahead – although a witness could only guess that that was the case.

The older girl moved in front of the younger and crouched down. "Please,"

The younger would have been seen to acquiesce with reluctance, and the quartet to quicken towards the apartment block across from the alley, with the bundle looking much smaller and less cumbersome in the older girl's arms, but we know that they were not seen at all.

.

They would also be not-seen returning later, without the bundle in either girl's arms, or the man's. In any case the girls would not have allowed the latter, but a witness wouldn't be to know.

On the return to the alley less was said between the two girls, and what was said was in a whisper in an attempt to keep it from the man's ears. However because of the height difference, a witness would have still heard, and as such so did the man.

It was the older girl who spoke first, face ashen, "Did you notice that little girl behind…?"

The younger returned the look in kind, "With the spiky pink hair? And the name plate on the door?" the redhead nodded, "So that means…"

They both looked around themselves before the older girl replied "There's so much less here than I remember,"

At this the man, who had been walking ahead of the strange girls seemingly in a rush to return to the alley, stopped for a moment and ran a hand through his 'ahead-of-the-trend' spiked hair, before looking to the stars as if they had done him wrong.

.

A witness would have been confused by all of this, sure. The pictures may have made more sense if switched around. A witness then would have seen three people go into a dead-end alley and come out, having found a baby abandoned in the darkness beyond his vision, ready to find a suitable home for the child in the apartment block opposite.

Things did not happen that way around, but the conclusion drawn from the images would have been, more or less, true.

The sounds could be taken as the idle chatter of a big sister, trying to go along with the imaginings of a toddler, but this conclusion would be so far from the truth that it would not have mattered if there had been a witness.

A witness would have been useless.


	3. 3: Restaurant (and 5: Stories: Part 1)

**6 – _Stories: Part II_**

"Grandma, where do babies come from?"

"When a Mother and a Father love each other very much, a stork comes flying through the night, and knocks on the door with a little bundle of joy,"

"Does he fly around in a funny blue box too?"

.

**4 – _Not a Bakery_**

The blossoms of Sakura lay thick and wilted on the ground, and the trees from whence they fell were bare and haunting. It was not exactly a picturesque location, but two days prior it had been absolutely beautiful.

The man took a step into the grove and sniffed the air inquiringly. The toddler walked out next, closely followed by the young woman with the red hair who was interested to note that her hair was certainly the most vibrant thing around. She looked down at her younger counterpart as she absently played with the wilted blossoms, gathering a handful and scattering them from shoulder height.

The toddler was the first to speak "I thought you said it would be different,"

"Subtleties," said the man as he locked his box, suitably distracted by the conversation to not notice that he had forgotten something vitally important, "it might take years, decades even, for the differences to become apparent," he looked around and continued almost to himself, "but I've been here before and your reality seemed to be quite similar, so maybe they overlap somewhere at some time or other," his brow furrowed, "I'm still surprised at how easy it has been to move between them, maybe they're more interconnected than I thought,"

The toddler nodded as if only in partial confusion, as opposed to the complete confusion of the older girl who was looking about as if something was missing, though she, nor any of the trio, had set foot in this particular cherry blossom grove before. It was therefore the toddler who asked the more intelligent of the forthcoming questions.

"But how can they overlap if they're parallel?"

"Ah, well, you see," said the man as he squatted down to the little girl's level, much to her chagrin, "the thing about parallel universes is that they're not really parallel at all. They're more of a wibbly-wobbly sort of," he meshed his fingers together in thought, "general mish-mash of interlocking realities, only a fraction of which are actually, as the name suggests, parallel. But it's much easier to say 'parallel universe'-"

"Because people think they know what that is and the chances of you actually coming across the join are so minute that we perceive them that way anyway, interesting."

The man was about to go into detail about _n_-dimensional spaces only being connected to _(n-1)_-and _(n+1)_-dimensional spaces unless they were truly parallel, but he realised he really did not want to then have to explain holographic and flat-shadow projection theories – or why one would perceive dimensions of plus or minus one dimension as they would their own – or indeed how and why moveable dimensions were different entirely.

So instead, he decided to say, 'No, but if it helps you to think of it that way then, yes,' but before he could express this to the little girl, the redhead asked the less intelligent but much more pertinent question: "Where's the bakery?"

The question elicited a number of responses from the man. First he stammered as his brain switched gears, then he globbered as he remembered the vital importance of the thing of which he had forgotten to bring out with him, and scratched his head in genuine confusion before muttering to himself about needing a fancy new digital watch and striding back from whence he came. There came a flash from the other side of the door and in mere moments it began to disappear unsteadily, with a sound one could liken to a piston moving up and down along the strings of a base guitar.

Of course there were witnesses to this strange event, but they were only the two girls, and they were unimpressed by the 'disappearing blue box' trick. On one level they were unimpressed because they had seen it before, but the main reason was that they were supposed to be inside it.

They waited an appropriate amount of time and then left, wondering what the hell they were supposed to do in this ordinary old world.


	4. 4: Not a Bakery (and 6: Stories: Part 2)

**6 – _Stories: Part II_**

"Grandma, where do babies come from?"

"When a Mother and a Father love each other very much, a stork comes flying through the night, and knocks on the door with a little bundle of joy,"

"Does he fly around in a funny blue box too?"

.

**4 – _Not a Bakery_**

The blossoms of Sakura lay thick and wilted on the ground, and the trees from whence they fell were bare and haunting. It was not exactly a picturesque location, but two days prior it had been absolutely beautiful.

The man took a step into the grove and sniffed the air inquiringly. The toddler walked out next, closely followed by the young woman with the red hair who was interested to note that her hair was certainly the most vibrant thing around. She looked down at her younger counterpart as she absently played with the wilted blossoms, gathering a handful and scattering them from shoulder height.

The toddler was the first to speak "I thought you said it would be different,"

"Subtleties," said the man as he locked his box, suitably distracted by the conversation to not notice that he had forgotten something vitally important, "it might take years, decades even, for the differences to become apparent," he looked around and continued almost to himself, "but I've been here before and your reality seemed to be quite similar, so maybe they overlap somewhere at some time or other," his brow furrowed, "I'm still surprised at how easy it has been to move between them, maybe they're more interconnected than I thought,"

The toddler nodded as if only in partial confusion, as opposed to the complete confusion of the older girl who was looking about as if something was missing, though she, nor any of the trio, had set foot in this particular cherry blossom grove before. It was therefore the toddler who asked the more intelligent of the forthcoming questions.

"But how can they overlap if they're parallel?"

"Ah, well, you see," said the man as he squatted down to the little girl's level, much to her chagrin, "the thing about parallel universes is that they're not really parallel at all. They're more of a wibbly-wobbly sort of," he meshed his fingers together in thought, "general mish-mash of interlocking realities, only a fraction of which are actually, as the name suggests, parallel. But it's much easier to say 'parallel universe'-"

"Because people think they know what that is and the chances of you actually coming across the join are so minute that we perceive them that way anyway, interesting."

The man was about to go into detail about _n_-dimensional spaces only being connected to _(n-1)_-and _(n+1)_-dimensional spaces unless they were truly parallel, but he realised he really did not want to then have to explain holographic and flat-shadow projection theories – or why one would perceive dimensions of plus or minus one dimension as they would their own – or indeed how and why moveable dimensions were different entirely.

So instead, he decided to say, 'No, but if it helps you to think of it that way then, yes,' but before he could express this to the little girl, the redhead asked the less intelligent but much more pertinent question: "Where's the bakery?"

The question elicited a number of responses from the man. First he stammered as his brain switched gears, then he globbered as he remembered the vital importance of the thing of which he had forgotten to bring out with him, and scratched his head in genuine confusion before muttering to himself about needing a fancy new digital watch and striding back from whence he came. There came a flash from the other side of the door and in mere moments it began to disappear unsteadily, with a sound one could liken to a piston moving up and down along the strings of a base guitar.

Of course there were witnesses to this strange event, but they were only the two girls, and they were unimpressed by the 'disappearing blue box' trick. On one level they were unimpressed because they had seen it before, but the main reason was that they were supposed to be inside it.

They waited an appropriate amount of time and then left, wondering what the hell they were supposed to do in this ordinary old world.


	5. 7: Home, or Somewhere Like It: Part 1

**7 – _Home, or Somewhere Like It: Part I_**

Nami Asanuma had taken little time when deciding which last name to take when she had run away. Her sudden and radical drop in age had felt more like a stabbing death than the glorious rebirth that her old friend had seemed to be having, but of course the process had left her friend in the prime of her youth and not an awkwardly mature three-year-old; and as such Nami had taken the last name of a politician who had been assassinated on live television in the nineteen-sixties.

It had taken her about a week to work out the correct form of her old friend's name, eventually settling on the form of surname which indicated immigrant heritage and the given name written the same as the watch company, and now she had the phone book open at the relevant page, ready to make the call with the news she could not tell anyone else.

She made the call and heard the customary greeting.

"Is this Seiko Hata?" Nami asked cautiously.

"Yes,"

"I'm trying to get a hold of an old friend of mine; her name was Sora…"

"Hikari? I… I wasn't expecting to hear from you… ever,"

The silence that followed was short, miniscule even, but it hung in the static air between the phone lines almost mockingly, as if saying that their silence was the only thing between them. But the silence ended, just as the call itself was ending the prolonged silence that had lasted almost thirty years, and it was Hikari, the woman who had taken the name Nami Asanuma upon her arrival here, who spoke first.

"So how is your…" she tried not to sound bitter, but her pause said everything she did not want to say, "child?"

"Oh, Rumiko's fine. She's made a bit of a name for herself and had a daughter of her own. Have you…"

"Moved on?" again she caught herself being sharp but this time she didn't try to hide her bitterness, "No, I'm a teacher again, and I haven't even…" she decided to rephrase, "I mean, I may look different, but I'm still married to someone somewhere, aren't I?"

"Everything is eternal with you isn't it? Love, duty, grudges… why can't you just let go?"

"Not everything is about you, you know,"

"When did I say it was about me?"

This was exactly what Hikari had been worried about, she had not called to argue, so she took a breath ready to change the subject, but it was Sora, the woman who had taken the name Seiko Hata, who changed it first, and she did so in a much softer tone. Clearly she did not want to argue either.

"I worried about you, out there alone in your 'condition'… how did you…?"

"I took myself to an orphanage on the other side of Tokyo. It was fairly depressing having to grow up again, especially without… well, you know…"

"I do, and for what it's worth I forgave you a long time ago for leaving like that, but Hikari, you never gave me a chance to explain, and I'm sure if you had you would have stayed,"

There was nothing to explain as far as Hikari was concerned. Hikari's brother had spent his final thirty years depressed and alone after his wife died in a car crash, and Sora – who had been close to succeeding in her attempts to steal him away from his wife before her death – refused to come back to Tokyo to make him happy.

Hikari had called Sora then as well.

"It's not like they divorced like Yamato and I, Hikari," Sora had said, "She died, and I love him too much to try and replace that which he still wants but can't have,"

"But he never loved her, he only…," Hikari had paused, and then decided that it was worth breaking her brother's trust if it meant she would see him happy again, "he only married her so he could forget about you, won't you please just give it a shot?"

"No, you're wrong. I'm the last person he wants to see. It's not that I don't care – actually it's quite the opposite – can't you just let it go?"

But Hikari had not been able to let it go, and had yelled some quite uncharacteristically demeaning insults, some so vitriolic and untrue that she was glad to have forgotten, although she did still remember saying, "Crest of Love? More like Crest of Being-A-Heartless-Tease you manipulative, self-centred, man-eating–," She had stopped herself as she realised the irony in what she was doing but by then Sora had well and truly hung up.

And that was precisely what Hikari wanted to avoid, even if all of that turned out to not be what Sora had wanted to explain – after all, Hikari had had thirty years to get over all of that, and a further twenty-nine to get over the fact that she had not actually gotten over it at all.

And so instead, she sidestepped the issue.

"Look I don't want to get into any of that right now, I'm fine, you're fine, we're adults, we have been for a long time, we're not each other's keepers,"

"Okay fine, I can respect that, but then, why have you called?" replied Sora.

Hikari took a deep breath. No more beating about the bush.

"There's a boy, and I think I know who he is – who he is really, if you know what I mean,"

"Oh," Sora did know what she meant, "but how can you possibly know?"

"Well, he wears that stupid headgear like they did…"

"Yes, but there is that show here that–"

"And I saw one in the park,"

"And?"

"And he was there! I saw it just after I had walked him through the park, it can't be a coincidence. It's all happening again, I'm certain,"

"So what? Even if it is all happening again, he could just be a regular, television obsessed child and have absolutely nothing to do with it,"

"His parents own a bakery,"

"Okay, I'll give you that, but even supposing he is who you think he is; what does that change? He'll live, he'll die and he'll go on to do it all again in the next life – you can't possibly be thinking of telling him can you?" there was silence, "Hikari?"

Her friend was right, what was the point? If she told him anything of who he was he would just laugh it off or run screaming, and there was no conceivable way she could bring up her own involvement with the otherworldly beings without questions being asked that she could not answer without divulging her true identity, or his.

It was all pointless. Even this call. Had she truly thought that her old friend would suggest anything other than what she herself had been trying not to think about? What Hikari had really wanted was just to talk about what could be going on and throw some theories around that she had been building about the significance of it happening to him again. But it seemed that Sora had not worried herself with any of that since their brief time together twenty-nine years ago, she had always been more preoccupied with what was in her own heart, and right now it was filled with indifference. And maybe, Hikari thought with a tinge of lingering bitterness, it always had been.

Nami put down the phone without a word and quelled her curiosity. The indifference was catching.


	6. 8: Not Just Stories

**8 – _Not Just Stories_**

"Grandma?"

"Yes,"

"Those stories you told me when I was little, where did you get them from?"

"I met him once,"

"Who, Death or The Stork?"

"Both. I met The Doctor."

"Huh,"

"Why do you ask?"

"It's just that you always talked about our lives being governed by pocket watches, and I met someone today who gave me one and I can see it. Does this mean I'm going to die soon?"

"Can I see?"

"No, you can't. Not before you tell me what's going on. Why am I only getting mine now and not when I was born like everyone else?"

"Honey calm down, the person who gave it to you, what did they look like?"

"He was my height, my age, messy brown hair, with a red patch at the front just above his stupid goggles,"

"Well that's okay then, The Doctor is taller and looks older than you, and his hair is more spiky than messy…"

"So it wasn't him?"

"No… but what was that you said about goggles?"

"Oh, it was like a stupid gogglehead convention, there were six of the idiots acting all high and mighty about how cool they were, and another one who wasn't wearing any, but you could tell he was just the same with that whole 'I'm the Ultimate Street Fighter' crap,"

"Ruki, language,"

"Sorry, anyway here's the watch, you can take a look at it if you want. I don't care about it anymore since it isn't going to kill me,"

"Ruki, what happened with the seven boys? Was there trouble? Did anyone get hurt?"

"Seven boys? What are you talking about Grandma?"

"You just said… about the boys with the goggles?"

"Seven? Geez, having one gogglehead hanging around is more than enough to have put up with… but I didn't say anything. Are you feeling alright?"

"Ah yes, fine, don't worry, I must have just been dreaming,"

"Dreaming about goggleheads? You mean having a nightmare, right? Anyway, I'm going back to sorting my cards, call me for dinner,"

.

The woman known to Ruki Makino as Seiko Hata wanted to object that her granddaughter had been out all day, but she knew it was pointless, just as the conversation had been after she had received the watch from the young girl.

She stared at the watch and its intricate design. It was most definitely the one she had seen before, albeit more, and yet less, worn than previous. She put it in a drawer, hoping it would remove itself from her memory as it had from Ruki's. But she did continue to remember it and in the following days the lies and the hurt of a life lived too long flooded back to her, its presence haunting her whenever she came near.

That is, of course, until the Doctor came calling.

.

Seiko Hata's flower arranging was a thing of unparalleled beauty. People often remarked to her that it must take a great deal of thought and effort to produce such inspired displays and she always agreed with them. In reality she had been doing it for such a prolonged period of time that her hands seemed to move by themselves whilst her mind wandered. On this particular occasion she was thinking about how mature her granddaughter had become in the last few months. Some of her friends had said how amazing it was how a simple change in shirt design could calm a girl down, but she knew better, and it had something to do with what had happened inside The Big Red Blob, or more specifically, with whom she had fought it off with. That Ryo was a good four years older than Ruki for some reason did not bother her as much as she thought it should.

Another thought that floated through her mind was that she had not received the call she had been half-expecting from her old friend about The Big Red Blob. Whether or not this was a positive thing Seiko did not have the chance to think about, because at that moment a commotion from outside the house commanded her attention.

She moved towards the front of the house as quick as she could, thinking that Ruki could be in danger – or worse, she thought, the person at the door could be.

When she reached the door she found a familiar Caucasian man struggling to keep a hold of a strange little machine that was making an increasingly frequent dinging noise, whilst he was explaining that the piece of paper in his hand meant that the ten-year-old girl with the shock of reddish-orange hair, strangely tight denim jeans, severe brown belt and shirt depicting (most shockingly to Seiko) a broken heart, had nothing to fear from him.

Ruki was explaining that if he did not get lost by the time she counted five, the specially sharpened rock that she was holding would be meeting his head at an immense pace.

"Ruki, go inside and sort your cards," said Seiko calmly.

"But Grandma…"

"No buts, you don't behave like that in public,"

"I'll behave however I damn well want!" and with that she stormed out, kicking the man in the shin as she passed.

"Is she always so aggressive?" asked the man as he rubbed his shin.

"You should really get to know her first,"

"She eases up a bit then, does she?"

"No, but you get a better sense of when to move out the way. Why are you here?"

"I'm glad you asked, I'm here to do a house survey: the effect of Western civilisation on the Eastern home,"

That wasn't the answer Seiko was expecting, but she showed him inside anyway. The machine's dinging had stabilised now, but was still working at an alarming rate.

"So what is that, then?" she asked.

"It's a machine, that goes 'ding',"

"And it detects what exactly?"

"Anomalies, and it seems to have detected something quite anomalous indeed. I know this will sound strange, but have you got anything that might have, oh I don't know, travelled through time, or something?"

She thought for a moment. _Either he doesn't recognise me because my hair colour faded, or…_

"Actually, I might. If you could just wait there a moment… sorry what was your name again?"

"Jon Sumisu,"

"Right, I'll be with you in a moment 'Jon'…"

Time travel, she thought as she left the room to fetch the watch and heard the dings from the machine slowing slightly, it really stuffs up your relationships with people.

"Here," she said when she returned and handed the pocket watch to him, "I believe, this is what you're looking for,"

"How did you…?" he asked, flabbergasted by the appearance of such a powerful item, as she ushered him out of the door and into their garden.

"Even I have heard tell of The Last Great Time War between the Time Lords and the Daleks and of the lone survivor who killed them all," she said, a bit too dramatically she thought, but she was having fun knowing something that he did not for once, "I also heard that there was another who escaped, stripped of his identity too young and bound in a simpler form, sent out into another dimension to ensure that the Time Lords would survive if such a calamity should occur," he was blithering now, words formed on his lips but the words would not come out. It was all she could do to keep the grave look on her face as she bid him what she had decided was to be the final part of her message, "So go now, Doctor of Death, with the watch and that psychic paper to guide you, you must find your kin and once again do what you must to save your race, and again do it without choice,"

"Who are you?" he asked as he stumbled back out of the gates that led to the parts of Tokyo that were not inhabited by a mad-woman.

"A woman scorned," she said and shut the gate with a flourish, waiting until she was safely inside the house itself to release the laugh that had built up inside her from the moment she had started the story.


	7. 9: Home, or Somewhere Like It: Part 2

**9 – _Home, or Somewhere Like It: Part II_**

The Doctor had done as he was told by the crazy Japanese lady simply because she knew too much, and people who know too much are often infuriatingly accurate when it comes to details. He had placed the watch on his psychic paper and to his eternal annoyance found that the space-time coordinates that appeared on said paper when he had done so, did indeed lead him to a capsule hidden in its own special mini-pocket universe just outside the time lock around where his home planet Gallifrey used to be.

The capsule contained (from least to most alarming): a life support system, a dimensional stabiliser, a human infant, and a brand new pocket watch attached to an undamaged Chameleon Arch.

A Chameleon Arch was a completely horrible machine that was used only in extreme circumstances, as it literally removes everything that makes a Time Lord a Time Lord from the body including the consciousness which is commonly trapped inside the pocket watch for safe-keeping. This process is rated as the second most horrible thing you can do to a mind on Gallifrey behind forcing it to look into the Untempered Schism, but since all Time Lords have looked into the Untempered Schism at a young age as part of their training, this does not tend to do them any damage.

An infant mind however… The Doctor shuddered to think what would happen if he opened the watch and let that mind return to its body. Would he unleash another Master?

It was clear that he could not take that risk.

But what was not so clear was what he was supposed to do from here, or rather it was far too clear, because in that instant he knew that he was caught in a self fulfilling paradox in which he would be forced to do that which he already will have done by the time he returned the watch to his past self – which in this case was his present, enslaved and terrified self.

And so the watch told him where to go. He had to reverse engineer the dimensional stabiliser and re-route it through his TARDIS's mainframe in order to reach the first destination which turned out to be a slightly younger Tokyo from the one he had just left (albeit one in a completely different dimension), but that was child's play compared to the lies he told to the distraught woman at the hospital.

And even those lies to the grieving mother of the boy who had died seconds after childbirth could not compare to the horror he experienced when the watch told him he would do the same six more times, and imprison the infant bodies in human form just as many more – splitting the mind from its rightful home like some sort of reluctant sadist, over and over – nor could it compare to the horror he experienced as he actually found himself doing the those horrible things.

'Would there be any peace?' The Doctor thought to himself. The watch told him that it would be a while.

The plan was for The Doctor to pick up the watch's body just before it died and then open the watch so he could regenerate and then trap the mind back in the watch with the Arch, and repeat – simple. But with all simple plans come complications and The Doctor found two big ones at the first deathbed in the form of two eighty year-old women who refused to let the dying man go. He was surprised by their transformation, but not nearly as much as they themselves were furious about it. They had no choice but to stay in the TARDIS with him and bear witness to and assist in The Doctor's gruesomely remorseful and deeply personal quest to ensure the survival of his race and order.

When the TARDIS landed twenty years too early in his native dimension and he accidentally marooned the two old women in young bodies there, a few more things clicked in his head and he realised that it was just one more paradoxical predestination and quite frankly he was getting fed up with it all. It was fine for him to be a slave to the perils of time travel, but to bring two innocents into it all at a time when they had probably accepted that death was waiting for them just around the corner, and then force them to have to live again in a strange world where their loved ones did not even exist, was a bridge too far.

He decided right then and there, out the front of a suburban bakery, that he would make good on his promise to make things right.

And so it was that after three more dimensions and four more of the cursed baby's regenerations, the blue box materialised around an unsuspecting disillusioned young teacher and whisked her away to the house of a woman she had not seen in twenty-nine years.

.

Seiko Hata had not taken kindly to The Doctor parking his TARDIS in the corner of her tatami room, and had taken even less kindly to the occupants. Not only was it this Doctor that she was actually annoyed at, as opposed to the one she had flummoxed earlier in the week who had not yet done her any harm; but he had brought along her old friend as well and this seriously disturbed her calm.

"Will you set that thing a second out of sync or something, I don't want to have to explain if my family come home,"

"Oh, look at Mrs 'Technological-Detachment' now," said The Doctor, remembering her complete lack of interest in any knowledge he had tried to impart about the greater universe, whilst he did as she asked, "even I forget I can do this sometimes, how…?"

"The hospital," said Nami with ill-disguised spite, "remember, you tricked me into believing you were his doctor, and when he started dying, you waved your screwdriver, it appeared, you said it was back in sync, told us to 'help you save him' and we pushed him inside – if only we'd known what you meant…"

"So, no 'Hi Doctor, how have you been' then?" He saw their drawn faces, "No, I guess not, thirty years is a long time for humans isn't it? How have you two been then?"

"I've managed," said Nami melancholically, as Seiko busied herself with a teapot and some teacups, "despite being imprisoned in the relative past, in a different world, in the body of a three-year-old, I did what I could. Do you know how hard it is, knowing more about the world than everyone else?" she waved away The Doctor's look, "Okay, we all do, but I can't even convince anyone of the things they should be able to explain – I got laughed out of Tokyo U for suggesting that time existed before The Big Bang for God sakes! I barely got into 10-dimensional 'brane theory…"

"Oh, you know that that isn't right either, it's more of–"

"Yes, a wibbly-wobbly mish-mash, I remember, but I'm merely using cosmology as an example, the point is that I got over not being able to share my knowledge and I sacrificed it for what I had before which was just a simple teaching job telling off ten-year-olds. I've been trying to kid myself that it is enough to get me through, and until today it was, but then you had to kidnap me and bring me here with her… and do you know what? I don't think I've really, truly coped with any of it, so screw you,"

The Doctor took this all in before replying, "I am sorry for leaving you both here, as you were, but you must believe me when I say that it was a complete accident, and when I realised…" he glanced over at Seiko, who was pointedly not looking at either of them, still moving about cups and saucers, "Well, I couldn't have done anything that I hadn't have already not-done, you see…"

"Yeah, I get it. You call yourself a Time Lord, but really you're a slave to it just like everyone else," said Nami glibly, "So if you couldn't see us before, why now? What are we all doing here?"

"I'm here to make things right,"

"I thought you said you couldn't reverse the pseudo-regeneration that we went through,"

"I can't do that, no, but when I met you two you told me you were Hikari and Sora of Light and Love, and it seems to me like neither of you are living by your creeds at all,"

Seiko finally spoke up and cut The Doctor off as she placed the final piece of china on the low table and stood to meet his eyes, "But we aren't Hikari and Sora anymore, Doctor, she's Nami and I'm Seiko now, like it or not we're different people, and those Crests that defined us – they belong to people who no longer exist,"

"But they do exist," said The Doctor emphatically, "you two are both trying to ignore each other right now just like you were back then, and that must mean that whatever it was between you then is still between you now, and if that's the case those two people must still exist somewhere inside both of you, all they need is a little persuasion to coax them out,"

"I'm not explaining anything to Sora, she knows what she did," said Nami vehemently.

"And I'm not going to stand and listen to Hikari abuse me in my house, so you better think of something else or I'm going to have to politely ask you both to leave," said Seiko much more calmly.

"If you aren't them anymore why are you using those names?" asked The Doctor, confused.

"That's our right, not yours – so am I asking you two to fly off or not?"

The Doctor thought for a moment before kneeling down and taking up the teapot to pour three cups of green tea.

"Okay, let's just sit for a bit, have some tea and settle down a little,"

Both women eventually knelt and took up their cups in silence as the tension resided.

"I could never really get the hang of green tea," said The Doctor as he placed his cup back down, "a cup of Earl Grey or English Breakfast usually does me, but I don't suppose you'd really understand… there's something–"

Nami cut him off.

"Oh, can we just get it over with and spare the idle chit-chat?"

The Doctor was taken aback but only for a second, there was just nothing quite right with these girls.

"Oh, alright then, Hikari–," he caught her look, "Sorry, 'Nami', why do you think you have strayed from your path?"

"What path?"

"Light – you said it to me yourself that Light and Love were the attributes that the two of you embodied, so what is it that has pushed you away from it?"

For all the anger and flippancy in her words previously, it was a credit to her that she gave her answer at least a few seconds of consideration.

"I don't know, maybe it was the sudden change in age, and childhood not living up to the memories I had of my first," she said thoughtfully, "it's a tricky one,"

"Oh, it's not that hard to see," said Seiko matter-of-factly, "You married into Knowledge. Answers only lead to more questions and questions only lead to doubt, and doubt is the first step into the Darkness."

"Oh, you can talk – you divorced Friendship. How does that work?"

"It doesn't, hence the 'divorced' part," she had not been looking directly at Nami but turned even further from her as she continued, "now can we talk about something else,"

The Doctor clearly had no clue what they were talking about anymore, and hesitated as if unsure as to what subject he could change to that would actually be a change. Nami made up his mind for him..

"No, now it's your turn," she turned to The Doctor, "go on, ask Sora about her 'path' and how she's 'strayed from it' – it's only fair,"

"Okay," he paused nervously, "now that you're Seiko and not Sora, why have you wandered off the path of Love?"

"I haven't," came the flat reply.

Nami just about broke her teacup in anger at that comment, but before she could release the vitriol that she so visibly wanted to sprout, The Doctor held up a hand for her to pause and spoke.

"Well, before this mild mannered teacher blows her top, why don't you tell me why_she_ thinks you have?"

Seiko shrugged, "There was a period when I wanted her brother's love and didn't care who knew it, although I don't think his wife – may she remain at peace – ever quite realised," she looked at The Doctor defiantly, "I know what I was doing was wrong, but he was all I had left – you don't realise how hard divorce can hit your social and professional life until you actually do it, I mean every one wants to buy clothes designed by the wife of a rock star but no one wants them if they've been designed by a 'gold-digging witch' as the papers put it at the time – and you know what? You find out who your real friends are too and Taichi proved to be one of them."

"But weren't you trying to break up his marriage?" asked The Doctor, unabashedly intrigued.

"Yes she was, but that's never been the problem," interrupted Nami, "the problem was that when it did break up, she suddenly didn't want him, even though he always had, and still did, want her,"

"Did he?" asked The Doctor, still intrigued.

"Whether he did or did not still want me is beside the point. His wife died Hikari!" Seiko was getting agitated now, "And in a horrible car accident! You can't come back from that so quickly – she was the bearer of his children for gods-sakes!"

"But he was going to leave her before…" started Nami forcefully before something in what Seiko had just said caused her to pause and for some pennies to, if not entirely drop, at least teeter precariously on the edge of a figurative void.

"You didn't see–" Seiko stopped and a panicked expression crept upon her face as she realised what she was about to say.

"Didn't see what?" asked Nami as her eyes narrowed.

Seiko was cornered, there was no way out, she had said too much and the secret that she had kept so for sixty years of her crazy mucked-up life was about to be revealed, to a stranger and the only person whom it could and should remain kept from.

"The look of pity on his face after…" she didn't want to say it.

"After what?"

"After we made–" Seiko was interrupted by a cough caused by a sharp intake of tea by The Doctor and the muffled sliding of a partition.

"I'll, ah," it amused the women ever so slightly to see The Doctor – a man who claimed to be over nine-hundred years old, and had by all accounts seen and heard so much of what the universe held – so flustered and uncomfortable, "go and see what moved that partition, you two, ah," he stopped in his progress towards the slight disturbance, "carry on, and try not to kill each other whilst I'm gone,"


	8. 10: The Witness

**10 – _The Witness_**

Alas at some point there had to be a witness, and also alas, at some point the witness had to actually have some interest in what they were witnessing – Ruki Makino just wished she had had the good sense to stop eavesdropping before she realised that her grandmother was talking about things that girls did with boys like holding hands and kissing and… well she did not know what else, but she assumed it was just as disgusting as the first two things that she did not want to think about her grandmother doing.

Up until that point she had been listening intently to the conversation her grandmother had been having with the two strange and inexplicable people, and had heard them call each other by odd names that sounded chillingly familiar. Before she could make too much of it, however, the man who had referred to himself as a doctor and been called a Time Lord – whatever that was supposed to be – slid open the partition and slipped through the entrance. She tried to run, but a hand had a hold of the back of her collar.

"Oi, I've got a bone to pick with you," said the voice attached to the hand and the doctor moniker, "that kick to the shins hurt,"

"When did I…" she started as the hand let go before she recognised the bumbling man from a week ago, on that horrid day that Ryo had said all those crazy, obvious lies. Not only were they about coming from another dimension, but one that was actually on television for stupid fanboy goggleheads to swoon over, "Oh, it's you, I've still got that rock, you know, so don't try any funny business,"

"Funny business? I'm hardly the universes greatest accidental comedian, but I'll try," He gave her a wickedly wry smile, and despite herself, she laughed like the little girl she constantly tried so hard not to be.

"Why are you out here then?" she asked for no other reason than to stop herself laughing.

"Oh, they're out there talking about boys and where babies come from, and I don't really need to know… Why are you out here?" he said, trying to change the subject. Ruki ignored the question.

"Pshh, we all know babies come from that silly blue box you came here in,"

"Oh, she told you about me, did she? That's cute,"

"Yeah, but I don't get why you take people away to die, that's a bit mean,"

"Well, they don't call me 'The Doctor' for nothing…" he said absently as he took out a stethoscope from inside his flowing brown coat and put it to the heavy partition, "I think they've finished talking about the icky stuff now,"

"Why, what's happening?"

"Nami's getting angry about Seiko not bothering to say anything about being with her brother when he learnt about his wife's accident, and… oh dear, I think your grandmother's crying, she's saying she couldn't be with him because she would remind him of the night his wife died… oh, the poor woman…" Ruki knew there was still something fishy about the timelines here; her grandmother was too young to have been involved with married men before she met her grandfather. Thinking of which, she thought, and then verbalised the thought.

"Hey, you're not my grandfather are you?"

"What?" he was clearly surprised, "No, this is only the third time I've even met… wait, now Nami's saying that it doesn't change anything, and that if Seiko really loved him she'd have been with him no matter…" It annoyed Ruki to no end that he was not paying her question too much attention, she had after all just implied that he was immortal, or a time traveller, or both and he seemed more interested in what was on the other side of the partition. "And she's still crying, just saying 'you weren't there, you didn't see the look on his face' over and over…" he finally turned back to her, "Oh I think I better go back in there, Nami's just told her that that's not good enough, and she's calm, which is very worrying indeed," he gave her a conspiratorial wink, "I'll leave the door open a crack for you to listen,"

"Wait, if I ask you a question, can I count on you not to lie?"

"I'm a terrible liar," he said without a hint of emphasis, and she was not sure which way he meant it.

"Are those two from another world that is like a copy of this one?"

It was the only question that she wanted an answer to, ever since she had heard of their secret names, and especially when she had heard them speak of Taichi. She longed for him to say no so that she could go on being angry at Ryo, because being angry at Ryo was much preferable to him being right, like he always seemed to think he was.

Before the man slipped back through the door, he confirmed her fears, and all he had said was: "I really think you should be talking to your grandmother about that,"

.

In the moments following The Doctor's return to the tatami room many things could be heard from where Ruki Makino had been sitting.

The Doctor consoled Seiko and her sobs eventually died away until she told him that it served Nami right that she should miss the part of the conversation that she would have enjoyed the most, since she had stormed out. After some prompting Seiko went on to correctly state that The Doctor was not really there to fix the two women's relationship, but rather to apologise for marooning them and to ask where Seiko had gotten the pocket watch from. She then explained what had happened, and The Doctor was audibly puzzled – considering what Ruki had asked him not ten minutes earlier – until Seiko let out the bit about receiving the watch from someone wearing goggles. Then The Doctor asked if goggles were popular with the two boys Seiko had known, and she confirmed it.

The Doctor put forth a hypothesis about a Time Lord he once knew who got around in a set of aviation goggles and called himself the Aviator. He fell in love with a tele-psychic Soothsayer and their child, he supposed, would be able to augment the perception filter on the watch and…

Seiko interrupted him, saying that Nami would have enjoyed that explanation, but that she herself was more interested in knowing if The Doctor realised that his quest was self-defeating in that by constantly keeping his fellow Gallifreyan from dying, he was actually just speeding up the day that he would no longer be able to regenerate. The Doctor told her that he did realise it, and so did the mind in the watch, which was why it had sent itself away from its body.

He then told her that he was planning on sending it back into its own personal mini-dimension, just as he had found it at her direction, and that after that he would not be coming back to Japan for fear that the improvised pan-dimensional TARDIS had put too many holes through the fabric of space-time. Without the stabiliser, he had stated, there was a good chance that it would slip through on its own accord and he would never find it again.

Seiko told him that he could have just said he did not want to be reminded of all the pain and suffering he had witnessed himself cause to the many regenerated infants and pre-regeneration geriatrics, not to mention the lies he had told all those grieving miscarriage mothers, and he had said that he did not even want to have to remind himself.

.

And so it could be gathered that Ruki Makino had heard a great deal of things that would have interested her, changed her perceptions on all that she knew – not in the least her own involvement in the whole affair which had been surreptitiously erased from her own mind – and that she knew where the paths of the three wearied old time travellers who had done so much good, so much bad and so much of no overall consequence, had finally diverged and the terms with which they left. It could also be gathered that she was the only possible witness for whom any of the things to be overheard would make any difference, aside from the strange three she had been eavesdropping on.

But Ruki Makino was a useless witness for she had not heard any of it.

As soon as The Doctor had entered the tatami room, she had made a decision and left to call up Ryo, the boy whom she was so terribly and utterly confused about, to tell him she was no longer confused.

She got his answering machine and left a message.

"Hi Ryo, just wanted to say that I no longer care if you were telling the truth or not, and frankly I think the only thing that really matters is the here and now, so this is me, here and now, confirming that I'm not dumping you because you lied, but because you were such a jerk about me not believing you. Get over yourself, I bet if I told you time existed before the big bang you wouldn't believe me – or understand for that matter because I sure don't – but I'd be right and you'd be wrong, and I wouldn't be a jerk about it, so there!"

After that was over she searched through her drawers and found the shirt that she had been wearing up until a week ago. It was the same as the one she was wearing now except that the heart was not broken. She was going to wear this shirt forever if she could.

Even if it meant that that stupid gogglehead kept telling her he liked it every time he saw it.

.

And so everything that happened, happened.

Everything that, in happening, caused itself to happen again, caused itself to happen again.

And it did so with only a couple of minor paradoxes, which are to be expected when things do not happen in chronological order.

And after all that nothing changed, because there was nothing to change it from.


End file.
